Land Value Taxation will solve many of the 21st century's most serious social, economic and environmental problems, and promote justice, fairness and sustainability. We CAN have a world in which all can prosper.

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Pages I refer to often

Progress and Poverty, by Henry GeorgeHere are links to online editions of George's landmark book, Progress & Poverty, including audio and a number of abridgments -- the shortest is 30 words! I commend this book to your attention, if you are concerned about economic justice, poverty, sprawl, energy use, pollution, wages, housing affordability. Its observations will change how you approach all these problems. A mind-opening experience!

Books I Value

Henry George: Progress and Poverty: An inquiry into the cause of industrial depressions and of increase of want with increase of wealth ... The RemedyThis is perhaps the most important book ever written on the subjects of poverty, political economy, how we might live together in a society dedicated to the ideals Americans claim to believe are self-evident. It will provide you new lenses through which to view many of our most serious problems and how we might go about solving them: poverty, sprawl, long commutes, despoilation of the environment, housing affordability, wealth concentration, income concentration, concentration of power, low wages, etc. Read it online, or in hardcopy.

Bob Drake's abridgement of Henry George's original: Progress and Poverty: Why There Are Recessions and Poverty Amid Plenty -- And What To Do About It!This is a very readable thought-by-thought updating of Henry George's longer book, written in the language of a newsweekly. A fine way to get to know Henry George's ideas. Available online at progressandpoverty.org and http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm

Where Else Might You Look?

Wealth and WantThe URL comes from the subtitle to Progress & Poverty -- and the goal is widely shared prosperity in the 21st century. How do we get there from here? A roadmap and a reference source.

Reforming the Property Tax for the Common GoodI'm a tax reform activist who seeks to promote fairness and reduce poverty. Let's start with the enabling legislation and state requirements for the property tax. There are opportunities for great good!

August 30, 2012

DON’T expect to hear much about climate change at the Republican and Democratic conventions.

Yes, there will be plenty of speeches about unemployment, budget deficits and other immediate problems. But the threats posed by global warming are decades away — or so we have been told repeatedly in recent years.

Many climate scientists, however, are now pointing to evidence linking rising global temperatures to the extreme weather we’re seeing around the planet. The United States has just endured its hottest 12-month period on record. The worst drought in a generation has parched the nation’s crop belt. Floods that happened once a century now occur every few years.

With distressing images of weather-related disasters saturating the news media, climate change no longer seems such a distant and abstract worry — except, perhaps, in Washington. In 2009, President Obama persuaded House Democrats, then in the majority, to pass a bill aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Facing a Republican filibuster in the Senate, however, the legislation died. And its prospects dimmed further when Republicans took control of the House in 2010. Mr. Obama has remained relatively silent on the issue since then.

Mitt Romney, for his part, has been equivocal about whether rising temperatures are caused by human action. But he has been adamant that uncertainty about climate change rules out policy intervention. “What I’m not willing to do,” he told an audience in New Hampshire last summer, “is spend trillions of dollars on something I don’t know the answer to.”

Climatologists are the first to acknowledge that theirs is a highly uncertain science. The future might be better than they think. Then again, it might be much worse. Given that risk, policy makers must weigh the potential cost of action against the potential cost of inaction. And even a cursory look at the numbers makes a compelling case for action.

According to the respected M.I.T. global climate simulation model, there is a 10 percent chance that average surface temperatures will rise by more than 12 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Warming on that scale could end life as we know it. Smaller increases would be less catastrophic, but even the most optimistic projections imply enormous costs.

The good news is that we could insulate ourselves from catastrophic risk at relatively modest cost by enacting a steep carbon tax. Early studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that a carbon tax of up to $80 per metric ton of emissions — a tax that might raise gasoline prices by 70 cents a gallon — would eventually result in climate stability. But because recent estimates about global warming have become more pessimistic, stabilization may require a much higher tax. How hard would it be to live with a tax of, say, $300 a ton?

If such a tax were phased in, the prices of goods would rise gradually in proportion to the amount of carbon dioxide their production or use entailed. The price of gasoline, for example, would slowly rise by somewhat less than $3 a gallon. Motorists in many countries already pay that much more than Americans do, and they seem to have adapted by driving substantially more efficient vehicles.

A carbon tax would also serve two other goals. First, it would help balance future budgets. Tens of millions of Americans are set to retire in the next decades, and, as a result, many budget experts agree that federal budgets simply can’t be balanced with spending cuts alone. We’ll also need substantial additional revenue, most of which could be generated by a carbon tax.

If new taxes are unavoidable, why not adopt ones that not only help balance the budget but also help make the economy more efficient? By reducing harmful emissions, a carbon tax fits that description.

A second benefit would occur if a carbon tax were approved today but phased in gradually, only after the economy had returned to full employment. High unemployment persists in part because businesses, sitting on mountains of cash, aren’t investing it because their current capacity already lets them produce more than people want to buy. News that a carbon tax was coming would create a stampede to develop energy-saving technologies. Hundreds of billions of dollars of private investment might be unleashed without adding a cent to the budget deficit.

SOME people argue that a carbon tax would do little good unless it were also adopted by China and other big polluters. It’s a fair point. But access to the American market is a potent bargaining chip. The United States could seek approval to tax imported goods in proportion to their carbon dioxide emissions if exporting countries failed to enact carbon taxes at home.

In short, global warming has a fairly simple and cheap technical solution. Extreme weather is already creating enormous human suffering. If it continues, politicians will have a hard time ignoring the problem when the 2016 conventions roll around. If the recent meteorological chaos drives home the threat of climate change and prompts action, it may ultimately be a blessing in disguise.

Robert H. Frank is an economics professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University.

Seems to me that we'd be smart to be relying on revenue sources that set up positive incentives, and this is clearly one of them.

Here's a pretty stunning number: Just under half of all homeowners under 40 are struggling with underwater mortgages.

The stat comes from Zillow's second quarter report on negative equity. And the numbers are even higher when you look at homeowners in their early thirties, a full half of whom are underwater.

That number, however, steadily drops with age, with just under a third of homeowners in their late forties underwater and just under a quarter of those in their late fifties buried under more mortgage debt than their homes are worth, according to Zillow.

The most obvious explanation is that homeowners now in their thirties were more likely to have bought starter homes at the peak of the bubble and now find themselves stuck.

So our young families are struggling with either high rents or unaffordable and unrealistic mortgages. Are we a great country, or what?

Only a few of us seem to realize there is an alternative to a system designed to produce these results.

Outside of my fenced seven acres — owing to the operation of the
great universal law of supply and demand — numbers of people are
starving; many more dying of too much gin; and many more of their
children dying of too little milk, and . . . for my part, I won't
stand this sort of thing any longer.

August 28, 2012

The widespread reduction in property tax yields created by the real estate bust is grim news for local governments because this tax remains their major revenue source. It is our contention that reforming the property tax can set communities on a path that generates jobs, reduces sprawl, expands affordable housing, and attacks a root cause of boom-and-bust cycles.

The tax penalty on buildings is easily underestimated. Property tax rates, typically set at 1 or 2 percent of value, seem modest. Unlike a one-time sales tax, however, the tax is levied year after year. Over the life of a building, the building tax can be equivalent to a whopping 10 to 20 percent sales tax.1 This cost barrier explains why many developers launch major projects only after first obtaining property tax abatements.

Those are the opening paragraphs of a fine article, co-authored by Walt and Rick Rybeck. Walt is the author of a recent book, Re-solving the Economic Puzzle, available from amazon and schalkenbach.org. I commend both to your attention.

Little Neck, the Ipswich summer cottage community at the center of a decades-long ­legal battle, has officially been sold to 166 property owners.

The $31.4 million trans­action was completed Aug. 10, ending one of the nation’s oldest land trusts, established in 1660 by settler William Paine.

Paine’s will stated that the land should never be sold and that rental income should benefit the Ipswich public schools. But an Essex Probate Court judge ruled last December that the trust could be changed to ­allow the sale of Little Neck to cottage owners, who have formed a condominium association.

A group of residents ­opposed to the change ­appealed the judge’s ruling to the state Appeals Court. But a single justice of that court upheld the probate judge’s decision, clearing the way for the sale.

Catherine Savoie, a lawyer for the residents, said she still plans to file an appeal with the Supreme Judicial Court.

With the Little Neck sale, a former board of trustees called the Feoffees of the Ipswich Grammar School has been dissolved and replaced by a seven-member panel, the New Feoffees. After expenses related to the land closing and past bills owed by the former feoffees, the trust to benefit the schools will have $25.4 million in assets, according to a statement issued by the New Feoffees.

Kathy McCabe can be reached at kmccabe@globe.com

How sad. How very shortsighted, to turn over to a private group of
tenants, at a bargain-basement price, in a down market, an appreciating
and glorious asset that was gifted on a PERMANENT basis to his entire
community by a foresighted and thoughtful citizen.

Some well-paid advocates caused the community to solve a half-vast short
term problem -- the failure to collect market rents over the last 20 or
30 years out of 300 -- with a vast "solution" which ultimately accrues
to the benefit of the buyers and their heirs, forever, and the detriment
of the community.

Privatizing public assets -- land -- is a poor idea. Just collect the land rent.

Smart communities finance their public spending by collecting significant portions of the land rent.

Mr. Payne got it right, and 300+ years of Ipswich students benefited.
Now lawyers, and stock brokers, and investment managers and the former
tenants become the primary beneficiary -- the first group for as long as
the corpus lasts -- I predict that the buying power of the trust income
will be negligible within one generation -- and the former tenants will
be fondly remembered by their descendants, as the ones who "put one over" on the town of Ipswich.

I hope Ipswich will engrave the names of those who let this happen in
some prominent place, with the words "never forget!" The state
officials who cooperated ought to be included.

Why, look upon the shrewd and pampered folk,
How safely they have hemmed themselves about
With walls of law against the noisy mob
Of hungry, overburthened sons of toil!
Woe to the wretch who recklessly breaks through
Those sacred walls! For him there lie in wait
Judges and hangmen, gibbets, yards of hemp,
Ready for service. Yet how few there be
Who see the truth!

August 27, 2012

Down to no bower of roses led the path,
But through the streets of towns where chattering Cold
Hewed wood for fires whose glow was owned and fenced,
Where nakedness wove garments of warm wool
Not for itself — or through the fields it led
Where Hunger reaped the unattainable grain,
Where Idleness enforced saw idle lands,
Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth,
Walled round with paper against God and Man.

August 24, 2012

Piers: Fare not the birds well? . . .
Wat Tyler: No fancied boundaries of mine and thine
Restrain their wanderings. Nature gives enough
For all, but Man, with arrogant selfishness.
Proud of his heaps, hoards up superfluous stores
Robbed from his weaker fellows, starves the poor.
Or gives to pity what he owes to justice!

August 23, 2012

I'm reading through parts of The Standard, Henry George's weekly newspaper from 125 years ago. In the issue I finished the other day, there was a reference to there being 154 contributors to that issue (and 100,000 readers, a figure one might find a bit difficult to believe -- this was in the first year of publication, though pass-along readership, particularly in the numerous local "land and labor" and "single tax" clubs, and library copies might make that credible). Though each issue at this time runs 8 printed pages, when I do "print preview" there are generally 90 to 110 pages of text per issue.

The piece below is signed by George, and while it is speaking to the anarchist trial in Chicago, it contains a lot that is extremely relevant in this election year 125 years later. It comes from page 1 of the October 8, 1887 issue.

I have seen no statement of the ground on which the authorities of Union
Hill, New Jersey, prohibited the meeting of sympathy for the Chicago
anarchists, which was to have been held there on Sunday afternoon, and
was prevented by the police with a free use of their clubs. But whatever
may have been the legal excuse, the action was wrong in principle and
mistaken in policy. We cannot too carefully guard the right of free
speech, and the surest way to prevent the spread of doctrines wrong in
themselves is to allow them to be freely ventilated, drawing the line
only when overt acts of violence are committed or incited to.

This, is illustrated by the effect which the violent language used by
the sympathizers of the Chicago anarchists has been producing, and which
is likely to be retarded by such occurrences as that at Union Hill. The
withdrawal from the Central labor union on Sunday week of the
representatives of the strongest and most influential of its component
bodies rather than permit themselves to be trapped into action which
would have been used as an expression of the sympathy of the workingmen
of New York with the methods and deeds of the Chicago anarchists is
indicative of the marked change, of opinion, which has been produced by
the ravings of the socialists of the progressive labor party.

Among the great body of workingmen there has never been any sympathy
with the bomb throwers of Chicago or any justification of anarchistic
methods, but there was a widespread impression that the men condemned at
Chicago had, in their excited state of public opinion, failed to get a
fair trial: and this feeling led some of the representative men of the
New-York trades unions, upon the first receipt of the news that the
anarchists had been refused a new trial, to consent to put their names
to a circular calling for a protest against the execution of the
sentence. But the violent utterances of the “progressive socialists,"
one of whom, at the meeting of the Central labor union last Sunday week,
called on God to bless the hand that threw the bomb at Chicago, and
their attempt to put the Chicago anarchists in the light of leaders of
the industrial movement who were being persecuted to the death for
legitimate and laudable efforts in the cause of labor, have produced a
strong reaction, well, indeed, may the personal friends of the men who
in Chicago are under sentence of death declare that their blatant
“sympathizers” are their worst enemies.

---------

The truth is that there is no ground for asking executive clemency in
behalf of the Chicago anarchists as a matter of right. An unlawful and
murderous deed was committed in Chicago, the penalty of which by
the laws of the state of Illinois is death. Seven men were tried on the
charge of being accessory to the crime, and after a long trial were
convicted. The case was appealed to the supreme court of the state of
Illinois, and that body, composed of seven judges, removed, both in time
and place, from the excitement which may have been supposed to have
affected public opinion in Chicago during the first trial, have, after
an elaborate examination of the evidence and the law, unanimously
confirmed the sentence.

That seven judges of the highest court of Illinois, men accustomed to
weigh evidence and to pass upon judicial rulings, should, after a full
examination of the testimony and the record, and with the responsibility
of life and death resting upon them, unanimously sustain the verdict
and the sentence, is inconsistent with the idea that the Chicago
anarchists were condemned on insufficient evidence. And the elaborate
review of the testimony which is given in the decision of the supreme
court dissipates the impression that these men were only connected with
the bomb throwing by general and vague incitements to and preparations
for acts of this kind. Even discarding the testimony (contradicted by
other testimony) that Spies handed a bomb to the man who is supposed to
have thrown it, there was enough evidence left to connect the seven men
with a specific conspiracy to prepare dynamite bombs and to use them
against the police on the evening on which the bomb was thrown. It was not indeed proved that any of the
seven men threw the bomb, nor even was it proved who did throw the bomb,
but it was proved beyond any reasonable doubt that these men were
engaged in a conspiracy, as a result of which the bomb was thrown, and
were therefore under the laws of Illinois as guilty as though they
themselves had done the act. It may be said that these men had worked
themselves up to the belief that it is only by acts of violence and
bloodshed that social reform can be attained, but that does not affect
the justice of their sentence. No matter how honest or how intense may
have been their conviction on this point, organized society is none the less justified in protecting itself against such acts.

---------

There may be countries in which the suppression by an absolute despotism
of all freedom of speech and action justifies the use of force, if the
use of force ever can be justified. But even in such countries complaint
cannot be made when the sword is unsheathed against those who draw the
sword. In this country, however, where a freedom of speech which extends
almost to license is seldom interfered with, and where all political
power rests upon the will of the people, those who counsel to force or
to the use of force in the name of political or social reform are
enemies of society, and especially are they enemies of the working
masses. What in this country holds the masses down and permits the
social injustice of which they are becoming so bitterly conscious, is
not any superimposed tyranny, but their own ignorance. The workingmen of
the United States have in their own hands the power to remedy political
abuses and to change social conditions by rewriting the laws as they
will. For the intelligent use of this power thought must be aroused and
reason invoked. But the effect of force, on the contrary, is always to
awaken prejudice and to kindle passion.

There is legitimate ground on which executive clemency may be asked for
the Chicago anarchists — that, being imbued with ideas which germinate in
countries where the legitimate freedom of speech and action is sternly
repressed, they were not fully conscious of the moral criminality of
their action, and that the main purpose of their punishment — the
prevention of such crimes in future — will be as well served, if not even
better served, by a commutation of the sentence of death into a sentence
of imprisonment.

This last is a very strong ground for the interposition of executive
clemency; and it is sincerely to be hoped that the governor of Illinois
will see its force. A tragical death always tends to condone mistakes
and crimes, and a certain amount of sympathy will undoubtedly attach to
the Chicago anarchists if they are hanged, which would not be aroused if
they were merely imprisoned.

But in whatever expression of opinion associations of workingmen who do
not themselves believe in the use of dynamite may see fit to make upon
this subject, there should be nothing which tends to put the Chicago
anarchists in the light of leaders and martyrs in the cause of American
social reform.

---------

There are certain lessons connected with this Chicago tragedy that are
well worth the consideration of every thoughtful American. The
appearance in this country of a violent phase of anarchism is not to be
imputed entirely to the ignorance or viciousness of foreigners
unacquainted with our institutions. If they did not find in this country
deep and grievous social injustice, they would not retain the idea of
violence as a remedy for social evils after coming here; and were it not
for this injustice which large bodies of our people keenly feel, the
man who should propose violence or plot violence as a means for improving the condition of the
people would be laughed into silence. The really dangerous thing in this
country is not the presence of foreign born incendiaries, but the
existence of industrial conditions, which, in the midst of plenty,
deprive the laborer of what he knows to be the fair earnings of his
toil, and condemn men able to work and willing to work to enforced idleness.
And the most dangerous men are in reality not the socialists or
anarchists, but the comfortable classes who declare that things as they
are are just what they ought to be, and who not only do not address
themselves to finding any reasonable or peaceful solution for social
difficulties, but do their utmost to prevent any such peaceful solution
from being generally accepted.

Nor is the talking about force confined to anarchists. The rich and
influential are too ready to talk about it, and to condone such
applications of it as the employment of Pinkerton's detectives and the
clubbing of peaceful assemblages by police. And the readiness with which
the idea has spread that the Chicago anarchists have been unjustly and
illegally condemned is a grave warning of the loss of faith in our
judicial system consequent upon the corruption of our politics. We are
yet far from the point at which it can be rationally assumed that seven
judges of a highest state court would condemn a number of their fellow
creatures to death against law and evidence; but when, as in this state,
$60,000 is sometimes spent to secure a judicial nomination, and great
corporations can make their influence felt in politics to secure friends
on the bench, the belief in judicial integrity is surely on the wane.

He who has no clear inherent right to live somewhere has no right to
live at all.

— HORACE GREELEY, Land Reform,
Hints Toward Reforms (1850), p. 312.

Consider from the point of view of an observer of Nature a landless
man — a being fitted in all his parts and powers for the use of
land, compelled by all his needs to the use of land, and yet denied
all right to land. Is it not as unnatural as a bird without air or a
fish without water?

August 22, 2012

As I listen to the 2012 party platforms, I am reminded of what they ought to be focused on, embodied pretty well in this platform from 1886-87.

PLATFORM OF THE UNITED PARTY.
Adopted at Syracuse August 19, 1887.

We, the delegates of the united labor party of New York, in state
convention assembled, hereby reassert, as the fundamental platform of
the party, and the basis on which we ask the co-operation of citizens of
other states, the following declaration or principles adopted on
September 23, 1886, by the convention of trade and labor associations of
the city of New York, that resulted in the formation of the united
labor party.

"Holding that the corruptions of government and the impoverishment of
labor result from neglect of the self-evident truths proclaimed by the
founders of this republic that all men are created equal and are endowed
by their Creator with unalienable rights, we aim at the abolition of a
system which compels men to pay their fellow creatures for the use of
God’s gifts to all, and permits monopolizers to deprive labor of natural
opportunities for employment, thus filling the land with tramps and
paupers and bringing about an unnatural competition which tends to
reduce wages to starvation rates and to make the wealth producer the
industrial slave of those who grow rich by his toil.

'“Holding, moreover, that the advantages arising from social growth and
improvement belong to society at large, we aim at the abolition of the
system which makes such beneficent inventions as the railroad and
telegraph a means for the oppression of the people and the
aggrandizement of an aristocracy of wealth and power. We declare the
true purpose of government to be the maintenance of that sacred right of
property which gives to every one opportunity to employ his labor, and
security that he shall enjoy its fruits; to prevent the strong from
oppressing the weak, and the unscrupulous from robbing the honest; and
to do for the equal benefit of all such things as can be better done by
organized society than by individuals; and we aim at the abolition of
all laws which give to any class of citizens advantages, either
judicial, financial, industrial or political, that are not equally
shared by all others."

We call upon all who seek the emancipation of labor, and who would make
the American union and its component states democratic commonwealths of
really free and independent citizens, to ignore all minor differences
and join with us in organizing a great national party on this broad
platform of natural rights and equal justice. We do not aim at securing
any forced equality in the distribution of wealth. We do not propose
that the state shall attempt to control production, conduct
distribution, or in any wise interfere with the freedom of the
individual to use his labor or capital in any way that may seem proper
to him and that will not interfere with the equal rights of others. Nor
do we propose that the state shall take possession of land and either
work it or rent it out. What we propose is not the disturbing of any man
in his holding or title, but by abolishing all taxes on industry or its
products, to leave to the producer the full fruits of his exertion and
by the taxation of land values, exclusive or improvements, to devote to
the common use and benefit those values, which, arising not from the
exertion of the individual, but from the growth of society, belong
justly to the community as a whole. This increased taxation of land, not
according to its area, but according to its value, must, while
relieving the working farmer and small homestead owner of the undue
burdens now imposed upon them, make it unprofitable to hold land for
speculation, and thus throw open abundant opportunities for the
employment of labor and the building up of homes.

While thus simplifying government by doing away with the horde of
officials required by the present system of taxation and with its
incentives to fraud and corruption, we would further promote the common
weal and further secure the equal rights of all, by placing under public
control such agencies as are in their nature monopolies: We would have
our municipalities supply their inhabitants with water, light and heat;
we would have the general government issue all money, without the
intervention of banks; we would add a postal telegraph system and postal
savings banks to the postal service, and would assume public control
and ownership of those iron roads which have become the highways of
modern commerce.

While declaring the foregoing to be the fundamental principles and aims
of the united labor party, and while conscious that no reform can give
effectual and permanent relief to labor that does not involve the legal
recognition of equal rights, to natural opportunities, we nevertheless,
as measures of relief from some of the evil effects of ignoring those
rights, favor such legislation as may tend to reduce the hours of labor,
to prevent the employment of children of tender years, to avoid the
competition of convict labor with honest industry, to secure the
sanitary inspection of tenements, factories and mines, and to put an end
to the abuse of conspiracy laws.

We desire also to so simplify the procedure of our courts and diminish
the expense of legal proceedings, that the poor may be placed on an
equality with the rich and the long delays winch now result in
scandalous miscarriages of justice may be prevented.

And since the ballot is the only means by which in our Republic the
redress of political and social grievances is to besought, we especially
and emphatically declare for the adoption of what is known as the
“Australian system of voting,” an order that the effectual secrecy of
the ballot and the relief of candidates for public office from the heavy
expenses now imposed upon them, may prevent bribery and intimidation,
do away with practical discriminations in favor of the rich and
unscrupulous, and lessen the pernicious influence of money in politics.

In support or these aims we solicit the co-operation of all patriotic
citizens who, sick of the degradation of politics, desire by
constitutional methods to establish justice, to preserve liberty, to
extend the spirit of fraternity, and to elevate humanity.

There is a natural and divine law anterior and superior to all human
and civil law, by which every people has a right to live of the
fruits of the soil on which they are born and in which they are
buried.

Down to no bower of roses led the path,
But through the streets of towns where chattering Cold
Hewed wood for fires whose glow was owned and fenced,
Where nakedness wove garments of warm wool
Not for itself — or through the fields it led
Where Hunger reaped the unattainable grain,
Where Idleness enforced saw idle lands,
Leagues of unpeopled soil, the common earth,
Walled round with paper against God and Man.

August 20, 2012

Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights and the rights are won; Wrong shall die with the understanding — one truth clear, and the work is done.. Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety enslaved for ten; My word shall stand against mart and college; The Plane belongs to its living men.

— JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY, Liberty Enlightening the World, Life and Poems, p. 420.

August 18, 2012

Do you imagine that it is by some way of nature that your property has passed from your ancestors to you? Such is not the case. This order is but founded on the simple will and pleasure of legislators, who may have had good reasons for what they did, but not one of their reasons was taken from any natural right of yours over these possessions.

— BLAISE PASCAL (1623-1662), Letter to the young Duke of Roannez,

quoted by Matthew Arnold in Last Essays on Church and Religion, p. 165.

August 17, 2012

Here's the NYT article, perhaps editorial, about Labor Day 1887, after the fact. It calls for the next Legislature to repeal Labor Day.

Labor Day

Yesterday was not observed as a general holiday in this city. It was a special holiday, and carried out very fairly the purpose of its institution, if that purpose was to enable Labor "to show its power." That is to say, there was a very large and entirely orderly procession of various trades, in which the representation of the building trades was most numerous and most conspicuous. It is said that this procession was augmented by dint of the discipline of the unions, insomuch that men who were anxious not to lose a day's work were informed that they would be fined a day's pay if they remained at work; so that employers in the trades so represented, if their work was sufficiently urgent, paid for the day's work twice over, once as compensation for the work and once as indemnity for the fine. This may be called tyrannical, but it is at all events a demonstration of the power and the discipline of the unions. The only serious drawback to the success of the procession was that it was compelled to march to "scab" music. The musicians, as yesterday's TIMES related, have been disciplined for not recognizing the "solidarity" of Labor by providing for strikes of sympathy whenever any shoemakers or longshoremen or waiters quarrel with their employers, and have undergone a partial excommunication from the Central Labor Union. They took a mild by effectual revenge by charging Labor $2 a musician more than they are accustomed to charge Capital when it organizes street parades or relaxes itself with picnics in Jones's Wood.

In fact, the observance of the day, so far as the day was observed at all, sustained the objections that were made to the creation of a special holiday to be known as Labor Day. Labor, in so far as it organizes street parades and political parties, means the association of men who work with their hands for daily wages, and who have, or suppose themselves to have, interests peculiar to themselves, and separate from, if not hostile to, the interests of the rest of the community. The fact that they can afford to take a day off, in addition to Sundays and holidays, for the sake of exhibiting themselves as a special class is a gratifying proof of their prosperity, no doubt, and one that could scarcely be afforded in any other country. But why should the rest of the community be compelled by law to suspend its usual business, or to conduct it in spite of legal obstructions, in order to show its sympathy with the antipathy of Labor to it? There is no reason, and the establishment of Labor Day as a legal holiday is a piece of class legislation of the most objectionable kind.

This familiar argument, which was ignored by Gov. Hill and the Legislature, was justified by the demonstration of yesterday. It was a demonstration of Labor, in this restricted sense, and of nothing and nobody else. The suspension of business was not complete enough to make the day a general holiday which people could enjoy in their own way without reference to the occasion of its institution. Such business as depended directly upon the banks was necessarily suspended. Other business was carried on under difficulties that prevented those engaged in it from fully profiting by the day as a working day or as a holiday. Apart altogether from the objections to this particular holiday, the first Monday in September is a very unfit time for a general holiday. Men who can afford to take a day now and then from their work have already taken the time they can well spare, and those who can afford a more extensive vacation, or in whose business it is customary to grant a more extensive vacation, have recently returned from it. Unless they are confirmed shirks they are anxious to be at their work again, and can celebrate any holiday only in a spiritless and perfunctory fashion. The new holiday occurs, too, when the Fall trade is just opening after the dullness of the Summer, and, being a legal holiday, interferes more or less with that trade, and consequently with the general prosperity, no matter how extensively it may be disregarded. From every public point of view "Labor Day" is objectionable, and one of the first acts of the next Legislature should be the repeal of the ill advised statute under which it was instituted.

The right of inheritance, or descent to the children and relations of the deceased, seems to have been allowed much earlier than the right of devising by testament. We are apt to conceive at first view that it has nature on its side; yet we often mistake for nature what we find established by long and inveterate custom.

August 16, 2012

The right of inheriting property is a law of men; it was established for their welfare and can only be continued on that condition. He who, at the beginning of society, staked out a piece of ground, and threw there some seed which nature had spontaneously produced elsewhere, could never have obtained on this title alone the exclusive right of holding the ground for his descendants forever.

Another from the NYT, the day before Labor Day, 1887. (Don't miss the last paragraph.)

The organization of the parade is reminiscent of a parade that took place during the 1886 election, described in Chapter 10 of Post & Leubuscher's book, Henry George's 1886 Campaign: An Account of the George-Hewitt Campaign in the New York Municipal Election of 1886. (Incidentally, while the NYT earliest references to Labor Day are in 1887, after the NYS legislature had made it official there, P&L, writing in December, 1886, refer to a Labor Day parade in Newark on Labor Day, September 6, 1886).

I've not yet read The Standard's account of the day. (Text files of the months leading up to it are online; I'll have to read the PDF original for the following issue, which one can order on disk from the bookstore at schalkenbach.org.) Here's the relevant passage from the 9/3/87 issue, including the blurb immediately above it, which quotes the fellow who defeated George in the election; it neatly encapsulates the distinction between the kinds of taxation.

"The true theory of taxation," says Mayor Hewitt, as reported in the World, "is to tax value wherever you find it." There was once a certain man traveling from Jerusalem to Samaria, who fell in with a set of tax gatherers who conducted business on just that principle.

*

Labor day will be celebrated in New York this year as a legal holiday. It was in 1882 that the Central labor union, then recently formed, issued a call to the labor organizations of New York to parade through the heart of the city on the first Monday of September. It was only with the greatest exertion on the part of a few men that the parade was made a success; but a success it was, and immediately after it was suggested that labor organizations set aside the first Monday of September in each year as labor’s holiday.

In 1883 the celebration here was much more significant than in 1882, and in several other cities it was also observed. During the following three years the voluntary observance of the day by organized labor grew into an institution in all the leading cities of the Union, and at the late session of our legislature it was legally made a public holiday in this state.

It is evident that the day will be very extensively recognized. Parades and meetings are to be held not only in the large cities, but in towns and villages. The farming population is not yet aroused to the significance of the day to them. Such persistent efforts to narrow the labor movement to artisans have been made by the pro-poverty press, to which a few members of labor organizations have unfortunately lent their influence, that farmers are disposed to count themselves out of the labor movement. But as this narrowness is giving way to broader views of labor, labor day will become a welcome and honored anniversary with all who work, whether in factory or office, in the shop or on the farm.

Ready for Labor Day

For the Great Parade Expected to Include 60,000 Persons

The preparations for the Central Labor Union Parade tomorrow have been completed. Grand Marshal John Morrison issued a proclamation yesterday requesting all workingmen and workingwomen to assemble at their respective places of meeting, whence they will march to take their places in the parade. Thereby they will show that although they may differ from each other in other matters they are as a unit upon industrial questions. All workers, whether they be trades unionists, Knights of Labor, Socialists, or Greenbackers, are asked to unite in the parade, provided they believe in the principles of the Central Labor Union and in a united labor movement, for the emancipation of labor, against the common enemy, capital.

No national flags other than American ones are to be permitted in the procession. The Grand Marshal has appointed as his aides, Hugh Whoriskey, A. J. Johnson, T. J. Mahon, F. Opitz, B. Abrahams, Michael O'Brien, M. Sullivan, P. T. Larkin, William Drebs, and Charles Burton.

The printing trades have been given the right of line, and Marshal William H. Bailey will be in command of this section. The chapels of all the morning papers, with one exception, will be in line. The printing trades section will have 12 divisions that will form along the streets crossing the Bowery from Fourth-street to Grand-street. Mr. Morrison yesterday estimated that fully 60,000 men will take part in the parade.

The entire police force of the city has been ordered on duty Monday. Superintendent Murray, who has been, and is still, with his family at Far Rockaway, will return to duty on that day and will assume command of the force. One thousand patrolmen, with the necessary officers, have been detailed to preserve order along the line of the parade. They will be under command of Inspectors Steers and Williams and Capts. Brogan, Ryan, McDonnell, McElwain, Allaire, Clinchy, Eskins, Reilly, Gunner, and Killalea. There will also be a large reserve force on hand in case of emergency.

In Brooklyn Monday the public schools will be closed. All the municipal departments of that city will be closed, and the City Hall will be decorated with various flags and bunting. In this case the employes in the County Clerk's office will celebrate by eating their annual clambake at DeWitt's Cottage Hotel, Broadway Station, Long Island. Many of these gentlemen are said to be afflicted with a most egregious bivalvular consumption and confidently expect to excoriate all historic annals concerning the disappearance of the clam. In Westchester County the indications seem to be that Labor Day will be observed by laboring. There will be hard work in all but one or two factories. The convicts in Sing Sing Prison will also observe the day by laboring as usual.

August 15, 2012

Looking for the earliest references to "Labor Day" in the New York Times, I came across some interesting material. This comes from early September, 1887, 10 months after the 1886 NYC Mayoral election in which a coalition of labor groups asked Henry George to run as their candidate.

(An August 31, 2004 NYT article on the origins of Labor Day by Edward T. O'Donnell takes it back to September, 1882. Evidently the NYT of the day chose to take no note until after the Legislature had passed the bill establishing Labor Day. Nor does an archive search on "central labor union" provide as early a reference as the O'Donnell does; NYT's earliest is 9/15/1884.)

I'm still curious about how the first Monday in September was chosen. Was it only a coincidence that Henry George's birthday was September 2?

1887-09-04

Labor Day and Idle Saturday

The last Legislature did two very foolish things when it established the first Monday of September as a holiday to be known as "Labor Day," and when it enacted that every Saturday afternoon should be a half holiday. Gov. Hill has more than the usual executive share of responsibility for the former of these performances. He recommended the measure beforehand because he thought that by pleasing "Labor" he would be playing a clever demagogue's trick, and the Legislature adopted the suggestion because its members were afraid of being outwitted by the Governor in their competition for the Labor vote. As a matter of fact, we have seen no evidence that the real workingmen demanded Labor Day. Most workmen can take a day off now and then at their own cost and take it when they want it, which they are not sure of doing if they take it on a fixed day. If they had any notion of getting Labor Day at the boss's expense that notion will be effectually dispelled. They will lose a day's work and forfeit a day's wages as on any other public holiday. The only people who are benefited by Labor Day are the people who are paid by the week or the month -- clerks, salesmen, bookkeepers, and so forth, and these do not count as "labor" at all in the estimation of the Knights.

It is silly to set apart a day on which no labor is to be done as Labor Day. It may also be mischievous. The use of the day which is suggested by its title is to organize demonstrations of Labor, by Labor, and for Labor. Now these demonstrations, as everybody knows, are apt to be demonstrations of the discontent which manual laborers, as well as laborers of other kinds, and idlers, and indeed all men whatsoever, feel about their lot, and attempts to hold somebody other than the discontented persons themselves to account for the unhappiness of their fates. With Labor this attempt takes the form of arraigning "Capital," or, concretely, of finding fault with the bosses. If, therefore, Labor Day is to be observed in any specific and distinguishing manner it will be used as a day on which one class of the community assembles to hear another class blackguarded, a suspension of labor being enjoined upon all classes for this purpose, and the whole performance going on under the express sanction of the State. To establish a holiday for this purpose is to give public authority to an un-American, undemocratic, and senseless procedure.

We have said that the only people really benefited from their own point of view by Labor Day are the men employed by the month as assistants in mercantile houses. They get their day off without any diminution of their pay. It is also for their express and exclusive benefit that the Saturday halfholiday has been established. This does "Labor" in the political sense no good whatever. If a laborer can afford to lose half a day's wages once a week he could in almost all callings arrange to do so without losing his place. If he cannot afford that loss it is a great piece of cruelty, in intention at least, for the law-making power to enact a statute which, if it were effectual, would compel him to do so. In cities, during the heat of Summer a kindly and sensible custom has grown up in many kinds of business of shutting up shop at noon on Saturday. It was very well to recognize and sanction this custom, and to encourage its extension, by making Saturday afternoon in July and August half holidays. There was no doubt a certain risk in doing this for men engaged in business that required constant communication with the banks. But the "heated term" coincides with the dullest season of such business, and the risk was worth taking. That is a very different thing from making fifty-two half holidays in the courts of the year during seasons when there is no pretext of necessity or use in idleness. If the law could be enforced it would cut down by one-twelfth the amount of work done in the State of New-York. That is a handicap which no industrial community in the world could successfully carry. Of course the law cannot be enforced. The laborers who are their own employers, including mechanics as well as farmers, will pay no attention to it whatever. Mechanics who work for other men will feel no more inclined to forfeit their wages on Saturday afternoons than on any other afternoons. Tradesmen cannot afford, now that the busy season is reopening, to lose their Saturday's trade, and even their clerks will not be benefited by the nominal half holiday if the disregard of the statute is so general as it now seems likely to be. The banks are bound by the law, and their clerks, with the clerks in public offices, will be able to spend Saturday afternoon in idleness. For this boon a new and perilous element is to be reckoned with in all credits and a source of disturbance to be introduced into business of all kinds.

Evidently this is not worth while. The judgment of all business men is that a weekly half holiday on which no debts are collectible, in addition to Sunday and adjoining it, is injurious and dangerous. Both the holiday laws should be repealed, the "Labor Day" law because it established a general holiday for the use of a special class, and the Saturday half holiday law because, except during the Summer months, the half holiday it establishes does more mischief than good.

It was in vain anyone repeated, "I built this well; I gained this spot by my industry." Who gave you the boundaries? it might be objected, and what right have you to demand payment of us for doing what we did not require of you? Are you ignorant that numbers of your fellow-creatures are starving for want of what you possess in superfluity?

— J. J. ROUSSEAU, Essay on the Origin of Inequality Among Men, Part II., p. 20.

August 14, 2012

We occupy an island, on which we live by the fruits of our labor; a shipwrecked sailor is cast up on it; what is his right? May he say: "I, too, am a man; I, too, have a natural right to cultivate the soil. I may, therefore, on the same title as you, occupy a corner of the land to support myself by my labor?"

If you know how to defend your rights, if you accomplish your duty,
this frightful disorder will cease, the human race, lifted up after
its long downfall, will no longer be the property of a few tyrants,
neither will the earth be their exclusive heritage. All will
share in the good things destined by Providence for all.

August 13, 2012

Then he says: "If I am born into the earth, where is my part? Have the goodness, gentlemen of this world, to show me my wood lot, where I may fell my wood, my field where to plant my corn, my pleasant ground where to build my cabin."

"Touch any wood or field or house-lot on your peril," cry all the gentlemen of this world; "but you may come and work in ours for us, and we will give you a piece of bread."

August 12, 2012

You are in this world as strangers. Go north or south or east or west, and wherever you stop you will find a man to chase you away crying, "This is mine." And after you have gone through all the countries of the world, you will come back knowing that there is nowhere a poor bit of land where, as a matter of right, your wife can bring forth her firstborn, where you can rest after tilling the soil or where your children can bury your bones.

— THE ABBE LAMENNAIS, Paroles d'un Croyant (1834), Chap. IX.

"This dog belongs to me," said these poor children; "that place in the sun is mine!" Behold the beginning of all usurpation upon earth!

August 10, 2012

Ipswich —
The new, publicly appointed Feoffees of the Grammar School issued a statement Tuesday, Aug. 7, saying they anticipate the old Feoffees will file the master deed for Little Neck by Friday, Aug. 10.

Filing the deed will pave the way for the sale of Little Neck to the current land tenants for $29.1 million.

The new trustees will manage an investment trust to benefit the Ipswich Schools instead of the Little Neck land trust William Paine established in 1660 for the schools.

“The mission of the new Feoffees is to make sure that the Trust grows prudently, while making, if possible, annual distributions to the School Committee, in perpetuity,” the new Feoffee board of trustees said in the statement.

A group of citizen interveners still have a suit to block the sale pending and are awaiting an initial ruling on whether or not that suit can go forward from the state Supreme Judicial Court.

The sale of Little Neck to the tenants will create a condominium association, which will own the land jointly.

The tenants had been leasing the land, but had owned the cottages built on the land.

I hope that someone will be posting, on some public monument somewhere in Ipswich, going forward year by year:

(a) the aggregate value of the land, as judged from the selling prices of the rather old and small cottages, which just a few miles inland would be worth very little;

(b) the value of the corpus of the trust;

(c) the amount of income the schools receive from the trust;

(d) the amount paid in feeds to the lawyers, the stock brokers, the fund managers, and the rest of the FIRE sector.

And engraved on that monument should be the names of the people who allowed this to happen, and the names of the 167 beneficiaries.I hope that Ipswich's assessor keeps a careful eye on the selling value of Little Neck property, and adjusts assessments on a regular basis.

Little Neck should never have been sold. And if for some peculiar reason it was sold, it should not have been sold at a bargain basement price. No other asset or combination of assets is likely to serve the schools as well as this one could have, properly managed.

I hope Ipswich's historians will keep good records for future generations to judge the actions of this generation.

School lands have a fine track record, and letting them go private is, to put it in the most kindly terms, short sighted. Land rent is the ideal funding source for public purposes -- far superior to taxing sales, or buildings, or wages, or any productive activity in the economy.

In love of home the love of country has its rise, and who are the truer patriots or the better in time of need — those who venerate the land, owning its woods and streams and earth and all that they produce, or those who love their country, boasting not a foot of ground in all its wide domain?

August 08, 2012

No man should be allowed to own any land that he does not use. Every body knows that — I do not care whether he has thousands or millions. I have owned a great deal of land, but I know just as well as I know I am living that I should not be allowed to have it unless I use it. And why? Don’t you know that if people could bottle the air they would? Don’t you know that there would be an American air bottling association? And don’t you know that they would allow thousands and millions to die for want of breath if they could not pay for air. I am not blaming any body. I am just telling how it is. Now, the land belongs to the children of nature. Nature invites every babe that is born into this world. And what would you think of me, for instance, tonight, if I had invited you here — nobody had charged you anything. but you had been invited — and when you got here you had found one man pretending to occupy a hundred seats, another fifty, and another seventy-five, and thereupon you were compelled to stand up — what would you think of the invitation?

August 07, 2012

I can easily imagine a great proprietor of ground rents in the metropolis calling attention to the habitations of the poor, to the evils of overcrowding, and to the scandals which the inquiry reveals, while his own income is greatly increased by the causes which make house-rent dear in London, and decent lodging hardly obtainable by thousands of laborers.

August 05, 2012

Let it be observed that when land is taxed, no man is taxed; for the land produces, according to the law of the Creator, more than the value of the labor expended on it, and on this account men are willing to pay a rent for land.

August 04, 2012

The wood of the forest, the grass of the field, and all the natural fruits of the earth, which when land was in common, cost the laborer only the trouble of gathering them, come, even to him, to have an additional price fixed upon them. He must then pay for the license to gather them, and must give up to the landlord a portion of what his labor either collects or produces. This portion, or what comes to the same thing, the price of this portion, constitutes the rent of the land.

August 03, 2012

A bale of cloth, a machine, a house, owes its value to the labor expended upon it, and belongs to the person who expends or employs the labor; a piece of land owes its value, so far as its value is affected by the causes I am now considering, not to the labor expended on it, but to that expended upon something else — to the labor expended in making a railroad or building houses in an adjoining town. . . . How many landlords have their rent rolls doubled, by railways made in their despite!

August 02, 2012

If this land (i.e., "land available for building in the neighborhood of our populous cities"), were rated at, say, 4% on its selling value, . . . the owners of the building land would be forced to offer their land for sale, and thus their competition with one another would bring down the price of building land, and so diminish the tax in the shape of ground-rent or price paid for land, which is now levied on urban enterprise by the adjacent land-owners, a tax, be it remembered, which is no recompense for any industry or expenditure on their part, but is the natural result of the industry and activity of the townspeople themselves.

— First Report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes (1885), p. 42.

August 01, 2012

It is certain, however, that a large part of the improvement is due to the increasing value of advantageous sites, an unearned increase of value such as Mr. Mill speaks of, and therefore a kind of profit which the State may restrict with least harm.